Education Corner

Up until I got my iphone I owned a cell phone, but I NEVER used it.  I didn’t know how to program things in.  I missed every call.  I was the one saying, “yeah… that’s my number but call me at home because I never hear it and I forget to check my voicemail.”  It drove my guard staff crazy.  And seriously… if they needed to get in touch with me they called the team captains (because you know every teenager is glued to their cell phone!).

But then came the iphone.  For this internet addict I now had a computer I could carry around with me to check my email and facebook.  Now my phone was there too.  And believe it or not… I no longer even have a landline telephone.

And now I realize what a GREAT organizational tool this would have been all those years I was coaching and taking kids on field trips! What a great way to organize all that information you need on a field trip and to make sure you’ve got emergency numbers on hand and can get to them quickly!

Here are some tips to prepare your Cell Phone for Competition Day!

PROGRAM THAT PHONE BOOK!

1.  Create a Guard Folder:

Create a guard section and type in every possible contact number you might need.  Student, Mom, Dad, Home, Cell,     Emergency Contacts… It might take a while to get it all in there, and maybe you’ll never have to use it.  But if an emergency does come up you’ll be glad you did it.  Plus it may come in handy when your floor crew gets separated from the team and you need to make sure everyone is accounted for!  So grab a bottle of water or cup of hot chocolate, put on your favorite music in the background and start punching in those numbers!

2.  Don’t Forget School-Related Numbers:

• Find out which administrator needs to be contacted should an emergency situation arise (the bus breaks down, a student gets hurt… or heaven forbid someone on the trip breaks school policies).  And get a second number too in case that administrator can’t be reached.
• Know the number for transportation.  I once had a bus driver so awful I had to call transportation from the competition site to request a new driver for the ride home!
• And don’t forget staff and band directors numbers.

3.  Contest-Related Numbers:

Most contests have a cell-phone contact for an on-site coordinator.  DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT!!  You never know when the bus will get stuck in traffic and you need to call to alert the contest officials you are running late.  And, while it’s best to make sure you’re prepared with all your maps and plenty of lead time… sometimes the bus just gets lost and you need to call for directions.

BACK IT UP:

It’s not a bad idea to ask at least one other staff member (if you have one – a parent volunteer if you don’t) to plug in all these numbers too.  You never know when one wrong move might send that phone crashing to the ground… and oops… now all those numbers are gone.  Back up your communication strategy with a friend!

CHARGE IT UP!

The night before the contest you’ll want to make sure your phone is fully charged.

Also – these can be LONG days!  Avoid using the phone for other “battery-draining” purposes throughout the day.  While you might have downtime to chat with a friend, play a few games on the bus or browse the web – it’s best to save the battery.

Take a charger along for the ride.  If you know it’s going to be a longer day than your battery can handle, take your charger with you.  Chances are you can find a wall outlet and recharge while you listen to your judges CDs or eat a snack.

COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR VOLUNTEERS/STAFF

Send out an email to parents with your contact information for show day the week before the contest.  Then, before leaving the school gather volunteers together and give them your number again so they can add you to their phones.  They’ll appreciate that you’ve covered all the bases!

DON’T FORGET THE BUS DRIVER

Most bus drivers these days carry a cell phone with them for field trips.  As soon as you get on the bus, exchange phone numbers with the driver.  This can make it much easier to coordinate departure or find the bus after the show (I can’t count the number of times I went walking around the entire school looking for where the bus was parked with the entire gang of parents and students following along!  NO MORE!).

AND KEEP A PRINT COPY IN THE MEDICAL BAG…

Ultimately, you’ll want to have a paper copy of these numbers along with any student medical information stored in your medical bag for the trip as well.  But if you’ve got it all plugged into your phone it can help cut down on time when responding to an emergency and help make sure that you can get in touch with everyone on your team with just an easy click.

Anything to make the competition day a bit easier and calm the nerves to let you focus on the performance and the performers is well worth the time spent in preparation!

Here’s the breakdown of how to best prepare yourself and your guard to experience success between the door and the music.

Psychological Preparation:

The reality is that it is so important for your guard to not only know how to enter and exit the gymnasium, but to feel confident and comfortable doing it. There is no better person to go to for advice on this topic than Shirley Dorritie.  Thankfully, she was willing to share some thoughts that can be used as tools to prepare your performers.  The following was taken straight out of an email from Ms. Dorritie:

GOALS FOR ENTERING THE ARENA:

To let your nervous system adjust to the next level of excitement.
To get used to the environment and audience.
To stay flexible and focused so you can enjoy your performance and adapt to the unexpected.

HOW TO ACCOMPLISH THESE GOALS:

Make friends with the audience as soon as you enter the room so that you have as much time as possible to adjust to the excitement.  Look at them and smile, enjoy them and let yourself believe that they and the judges WANT YOU TO SUCCEED! (It’s true!)

Feel the excitement.  BREATHE and let it run through you, don’t try to stop it or block it!  Get used to what it feels like, and let yourself enjoy it.  This is why you come to contests instead of just staying at rehearsal!

Don’t get caught by surprise when the announcer says you may take the floor in competition! Check out environment and get used to it:
Where is the AUDIENCE, how big is it?
Where are the JUDGES? (How far away, how high up will you need to communicate?)
Where are the LIGHTS?  How BRIGHT is it?
What is the SURFACE like?
What can you HEAR?  How loud is the gym, the audience, the sound system?
What and who can you SEE?

Shirley Dorritie, Deliver the Goods!  Practical Strategies for Performing at the Top of Your Game When the Pressure is On!

Logistical Preparation:

As hard as this may be, instructors need to spend time rehearsing a gym entrance – from the equipment placement responsibilities of performers to the pulling of the floor.   Depending on the amount of show trappings that your guard has, this can take some time.  You may want to devote an entire rehearsal to this process. However, it would be best if this rehearsal occurred in a gym to best connect the rehearsal with the performance arena. Get your performers as comfortable as possible with this aspect of their show.   Leave nothing for chance.

Let’s face it, after time spent preparing the artistic element of a show, no one wants to get zapped with a penalty from the T&P judge.  To avoid this, make sure to check out the WGASC 2009 Policy Manual for specific guidelines and penalty information regarding entrances and exits.

Safety:

The safety and wellbeing of your performers is top priority.  Floors are extremely bulky and heavy.  It is important that everyone involved with the pulling of floors is on the same page.  The following information is an excerpt from a larger article entitled, So You Volunteered for Floor Crew….Now What? by Color Guard Educator founder/editor Catina Anderson.

It is important that we place our crew members’ safety above any worries about time limits or penalties.  Before pulling the floor, look around to make sure everyone is positioned and ready.  Then move the floor only as quickly as your slowest member can move.  Every year you see people get tripped up by the floor and fall in an effort to move as quickly as possible.  Many times this can be avoided if the entire crew simply looks around to make sure everyone is ready to move before stepping off.  Listen to the directions of the floor crew lead and coach.

When pulling out the floor you need to bend over and keep the tarp as close to the floor as possible to avoid getting a lot of air caught under the tarp.  The air creates large pillowing bubbles that can trip the performers…and once they’re there they are hard to get rid of without starting over!  So please keep the floor LOW.

When refolding the floor at the end of the show make sure that there are people at each corner before you start to pull or the floor gets really messy and hard to deal with.

NO BALLOONING: When you are folding the floor at the end you also need to STAY LOW.  If too much air gets under the floor as you fold it, the floor can get hard to handle and this can be dangerous.  Extreme instances of this are called “ballooning” and can get us completely disqualified because it is dangerous.  Even a little air makes the floor difficult to fold and carry out of the gym though…so work hard to stay low

Keep an eye out for stray equipment, bags, shoes, etc. that might get left on the wrong side of the timing line…the judges won’t stop our time until EVERYTHING (including an abandoned hairpiece) is over that line…so we need to be vigilant.

Finally, just make sure you know where the coach is and where the boundary lines are so that things move quickly.  Listen for the coach and the floor crew lead to yell out instructions and things will go very smoothly.

Last, but not least: Thanks again to both Shirley Dorritie and Catina Anderson for lending their knowledge to this article.

They step onto the gym floor amidst a flurry of pre show excitement, expectations of their team mates and instructors, and last minute show changes.  In the audience are friends, family, instructors, competitors and judges.  They can hear the blood pumping in their ears, hearts are racing, and their throats are dry.  Their mind is spinning with an overflow of information; don’t forget to do this, remember to do that.   If only there was an escape from this moment!  Panic fills their body. How can they possibly go on?!  Every muscle is tense as they wait for the sound of the announcer’s voice to begin their performance.

As extreme as the above scenario may seem, some performers in our activity may experience anxiety very similar to the description.  It is commonly known as stage fright or ‘fight or flight’ response.    For some individuals this may be a type of nervous energy that happens prior to the performance and disappears as soon as they begin to perform.  The feelings are manageable.  In fact, these individuals may even be able to employ their nervous energy toward the betterment of their performance.  However, there may be other performers in which this condition considerably hinders the success of their performance.  In this case, they have not yet learned how to manage their nervous energy and harness it for their benefit.  Left without help, it can become debilitating.

It is my hope that the following information can give you a few teaching tools that will enable your students to maintain power over their nervous energy before it elevates to an unmanageable state.

First of all, we need to know exactly what we are dealing with; it’s the brain.  More specifically it is the sympathetic nervous system. In regards to stage fright, it works like this: When a performer is experiencing feelings of anxiety, they are most likely giving over control to an imaginary enemy.  Often times this imaginary enemy may be their own subconscious belief that they will not be able to perform to the satisfaction of anyone – especially themselves.  But wait; there is a good guy in this situation – the parasympathetic nervous system.  In this situation, your goal should be to educate your students on how to enable and utilize this ‘good guy’ in an otherwise stressful situation.

The Importance of Breath:

As you teach your students how to be in a ‘zone’ of performance, breathing is topic that absolutely should come up.   Consistent breath is what ties together the mind and the body.  Without it, your students will not be able sustain high levels of performance.  When attention is given to breath, performers will become anchored in the moment; both physically and mentally.
In the fight against stage fright – breath is your first avenue of defense.  It will help to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system to empower the individual.  Take a quick moment and imagine yourself warming up your guard on the basketball courts prior to competition.  You start to notice panic slowly ebbing into individuals on your team.    It is important that you not allow this to infect your entire team. Depending on the age of your performers, panic can spread quickly. Stop the epidemic now and breathe!

• Diaphragmatic Breathing: Have your performers hold their hands on their stomachs.  They should be able to feel their stomachs expand as they inhale and contract as they exhale.  Their back and sides should expand and contract as well. Take at least 10 large and slow breathes.  This will enable their bodies to move more air in and get rid of stale air when they exhale.
• Even Breathing: Have your performers breathe in and out for the same amount of counts.  Example:  Breathe in 1,2,3,4,5,  Breathe out 1,2,3,4,5 (the number of counts really depends on how slowly you are counting).  This will regulate breathing and create focus/ relaxation.  Longer exhalations help reduce stress.  So, in addition to counting the inhale and exhale for an even amount of counts, you may want to challenge them to exhale for longer counts than the inhale.

So, that’s the breathing part of the situation.  Now let’s talk about slaying the stage fright monster prior to arriving at a competition site. As stated earlier, some of the overwhelming nerves may be associated with an individual’s lack of confidence in their ability.  Considering this, instructors should combat this perception by making sure they establish a strong mind set in the rehearsal process.

• Preparation: Use action in preparation to tackle anxiety.   Simulate the competitive performance environment continuously in your rehearsals. Make sure that your performers know everything that will occur at a competition – right down to mimicking the announcer’s script prior to the performance.  Talk them through every aspect of the competitive day – leave nothing for self discovery.  Perhaps you can have an open rehearsal night where friends and family can come to watch the show.  This will allow those students to acclimate in a ‘friendly’ environment prior to an actual tournament.  Take advantage of information posted on the WGASC site and utilize the facility maps found on the ‘Winter Guard Schedule’ tab to familiarize your team with the layout of the gym and surrounding areas.  They should feel as comfortable as possible with the show site.
• Practice: OK, I realize that as instructors we are an artistic and somewhat eclectic bunch that can be given to last minute changes in choreography and such.  Try to refrain from this as much as possible if you have any individuals who struggle with performance anxiety.  Save the changes for early in the week, giving plenty of practice time prior to the performance.  Practice all aspects of the choreography as much as possible to establish a comfort and confidence in the show.  New content/unrehearsed will only add to the anxiety level.
• Mindset: This is a battle against negative self talk.  Find a way to turn the mind rhetoric away from “I can’t do this!” to “Yes I Can!”  On the flip side of this, the negative talk may also contain an inaccurate and negative perception of what individuals (audience members, judges) think of the performer.  In both cases, encourage your performers to focus on what they would like to give in their performance.  Positive imagery is an effective tool to use in this.  Turn on the show music and have the performers close their eyes and visualize a perfect performance.  Do this as many times as possible.

Really this is one of those areas that we teach in color guard from the perspective of the performance; however, its value transcends our sport and has real life application and significance.  How awesome is it that we teach not only color guard skills, but we also have the opportunity to positively impact a life!

Until next week….Just Breathe.

Most instructors begin each season with a primary focus on fundamentals which, over time, shifts towards choreography and cleaning the show.  The challenge we are faced with is how to maintain daily rehearsal of fundamentals throughout the season with limited rehearsal time and increased pressure to clean the show.  This article focuses on a variety of strategies used by different instructors to overcome time crunches.  Perhaps one or more of these ideas will help you tackle this challenge within your own schedule!

Strategy 1: Lesson Planning

Lesson planning is as important a tool for coaches as it is for classroom teachers.  We must set goals, evaluate the time we have to achieve them, determine which exercises will be required to meet those objectives and then create a schedule.  If having a well-trained unit is your goal, you will want to work fundamentals at every rehearsal.  Lesson Planning can help ensure all of your rehearsal objectives are met!

The Big Picture

When sitting down to develop a strategy to incorporate “basics” throughout the season you will want to look at both the daily rehearsal plan as well as the “big picture” of the season as a whole.

Start by determining your goals and objectives for the season.

Then work backwards from your performances writing in your “goal dates” for having certain sections of the show taught.  (Remember…the whole show does not HAVE to be finished at the first performance.  In some cases it may be wiser to teach choreography more slowly making sure that performers have a strong technique rather than to teach it all quickly, glossing over technique and ending up with lots of bad habits that are difficult to fix!).  Establishing your goal dates will help you to make sure you are finished teaching when you really want to be.  While “winging it” may be easier in the short-term, it may leave you with an unfinished show for much longer than you had anticipated with too little time at the end of the season for critical updates, changes and cleaning.  After you’ve established your goal dates for teaching routine go through your schedule and determine how much of each rehearsal can be devoted to fundamentals and how much to choreography or drill.

The amount of time you spend on fundamental exercises at each rehearsal may change throughout the season as well as the types of exercises you choose to work on.

Start Off Strong

Early in the season, detail all of your standard exercises and explain to your performers both how to do the exercise and the purpose/goal of the exercise.  Review until they are demonstrating correct technique and the exercise is memorized.  At the beginning of the season you will probably be spending half or more of each rehearsal on establishing fundamentals.  Address each skill separately so it can be focused on and mastered before attempting to layer demands with beginning students.

Create a Schedule

While you want to rehearse fundamentals at every rehearsal, you may not have time to do them all at every rehearsal!  Here’s one approach.

1.  First, determine which exercises or combinations you consider so important you will require students to do them at every rehearsal (your “bare minimum”).  These are usually your strength-building exercises and those that increase flexibility.  Examples would be drop spins, double-time spins and flourishes on flag or hand spins, tosses and flourishes on weapons.  Many instructors also choose to isolate high-risk skills during the daily basics block to increase the odds for successful performance.  These might include tosses from the show or a particularly difficult combination.

2.  Next, list all of the other exercises that you believe are important for your students to rehearse on a regular basis.  These might include carving exercises, spins and stops, thumb flicks (aka wrist flicks), backhand exercises, pull-hits and a variety of tosses.

3.  Determine how much time it takes to work through your daily exercises as well as an appropriate amount of stretching.  Then, evaluate how much time you will have left and how many additional exercises you might be able to fit in each day.

4.  Create a weekly schedule to fill this additional time.  For example, on Mondays and Wednesdays add the carving exercise, on Tuesdays and Thursdays pull-hits, on Mondays and Thursdays double-time on rifle, etc.

The approach above works well for structuring the start of your season, However, as the season progresses, your daily routine or approach to block should be flexible according to the needs of your show and performers.  You should not feel limited by your plan or schedule.  Don’t be afraid to change things up from time to time.  Not only will this keep things fresh for your performers but you absolutely should feel free to tailor your time in block to the needs of the moment.  If you maintain your “bare minimum” you can use the remaining time to isolate a skill that needs improvement in the show.

For example, my performers this past fall season were struggling early-on with shoulder-alignment to the sidelines during marching band, especially during jazz running, and this was affecting their cleanliness.  So, after we did our “bare minimum,” instead of running one of our other standard fundamentals exercises I spent some time for a week having them work a variety of different exercises I created that required them to isolate and address this particular issue.  You don’t have to be limited to well-known or “standard” exercises in block.  You can make them up as you go.  For this particular challenge I worked with the kids first on marching with hand spins (rifle) and speed spins (flag) in a standard 8 to 5 step. I then incrementally increased the step size until they were doing a full jazz run because I noticed that their control of their upper body was better with smaller step sizes and less consistent in full jazz run.  We addressed all sorts of upper body alignment and control issues as well as reinforcing proper marching technique.  This was what was most important for us to progress during that particular week even though it wasn’t part of our typical fundamentals “catalog.”

“My bare minimum daily drill for flags is that they will do one hundred drop spins with body immediately followed by 100 Peggy Spins, sometimes with body (we call it 1 and 1) no matter what time constraints we face.  If there is time we do both left and right, if we are limited we do the weakest side which is usually the left.  There may be a few timing ticks, but breaks are never permitted, no matter how little time we have.

The weapons are required to throw five of each toss that they throw in the show.  The clincher is, the entire line must catch five consecutively!  That means if one person drops, we go back to zero.  This helps mentally prepare the students for the stress of performance which is something that we as instructors must address!  On that fifth repetition, the kids are almost as nervous as they are at shows!  … they are preparing themselves mentally and physically for performance.”

Strategy 2: Layering Movement

Cheryl Myers, a dance instructor and equipment tech with Trumansburg High School in New York who also serves as a WGI Movement judge stresses, “…the extreme importance of not only an equipment block, but a movement training section incorporated into it also.”  What happens with the body is projected tenfold through the pole and silk.  Alignment, marching technique, a strong center, it all affects the carriage of the equipment and can make or break the uniformity of an ensemble.  However, movement technique rehearsal is often left for last on the priority list due to lack of time or instructor experience, taking a backseat to the more obvious and beloved equipment skills.  It doesn’t have to be so!  You can find time to train graceful movers every day by layering your movement basics beneath your most important equipment basics.  Here are some ideas:

1.  During your “camps” allow adequate time to isolate and teach movement fundamental.  Students must understand the basic movement principals before you ask them to layer these demands beneath their equipment work.  Some of these basic movement skills include traveling (marching, jazz running), plie’, releve’, tendu, passe’, centering and balance, basic turns, saute’, elements of posture and arm movement, etc.

2.  It is important for students to be able to march “in step” while performing their upper body skills.  Start by having them mark time under fundamentals.  Consider adding music to challenge them to respond to varying tempos in order to prepare them for the challenge they will face learning routine.

3.  Since drop spins are often performed daily, create a lower body combination for students to perform under drop spins.  This combination might include a series of marking time, plie’, releve’, tendu and even passe’.  Create something similar (only with different movement skills) under rifle hand spins.

Myers routinely advises instructors during critique that, “training on a regular basis, even if it is only 20 minutes at the beginning of a rehearsal will show results, and they will span not only the movement caption but bleed into all other captions as well.”

Strategy 3: Combinations

Many instructors create short combinations of moves which serve both to save time and to train students to memorize and focus in short chunks.  Determine what fundamental skills your students need to be able to perform both consecutively and simultaneously and create a combination for them to rehearse every day.

An example of this is the following combination which combines 3 fundamental flag equipment skills (performed on both hands) over a standard marching step (in our case a toe step).  It further challenges the students to change directions within a box formation, to maintain spacing (dress and cover) and to practice sliding (shifting) to the front sideline on their sideways movements.  Finally, they must memorize the exercise and focus throughout to perform it correctly.  We start the season with teaching the equipment demands separately from the movement demands and slowly add pieces (first marking time, then just the right side box, then the left) until the performers are able to perform the entire exercise.

Advanced Box Drill:

Starting Position: Right Shoulder Arms

Mark Time 8 then begin moving and spinning.

Forward 8 (8 counts right hand drop spins)

Slide Left 12 (4 sets of drop spin + thumb flip)

Backward 8 (8 counts of right hand speed spins)

Slide Right 12 (4 sets of speed spins (counts 1 & 2 only) + thumb flip)

Forward 8 (drop stop on 1-2, hold 3 – 6, bring let hand down to ready on count 7, hold

Slide Right 12 (4 sets of left hand drop spin + thumb flip)

Backward 8 (8 counts left speed spins)

Slide Left 12 (4 sets of left speed spins (counts 1 & 2 only) + thumb flip)

Forward 8 (8 counts left drop spins)

Backward 8 (8 counts left drop spins)

Halt (drop stop)

The box drill can be simplified for beginners by making each leg of the box the same (perhaps 8 counts) and having them do only one skill (such as drop spins or speed spins) throughout.

Strategy 4: Basics Routines

Many instructors create a “basics routine” from the most common fundamental skills.  Sometimes this is set to a particular piece of music or may even be set to the band’s on-field warm-up.  Basics routines may be useful in situations where an instructor can not be present each day to lead warm-up or when the band and guard need to warm-up together on field.  Just be careful not to allow students to go on “automatic pilot.”  It is not advisable for instructors to leave the students to go through the basics routine on their own with no instruction or evaluation.  They will inevitably get lazy and you will see little growth.  If you do decide to go the route of a basics routine, observe the students as they perform it each day and take time afterward to correct any inconsistencies or mistakes that crop up by isolation and repeating that particular skill.

Strategy 5: Multi-tasking

You may be sitting here still thinking, “Yeah, this is all great but there’s no way it will help me in the ten minutes my band director gives us to warm-up in the fall!  We’re lucky if we can even find time to stretch!”  This is a reality for many coaches and this situation requires the most creativity.

During the fall season there are inevitably times where the band director is working with another section and the guard is simply waiting.  Scoop up these little chunks of time to fit in a few of your most neglected fundamentals exercises.  You will have to establish a discipline throughout the group that they should be looking to you (or their student leaders) for instructions during any downtime and you will need to identify a method for letting everyone know which exercise you are doing and how to start (whether that’s yelling it across the field or some type of hand signal).  But right there in their drill spots they can improve their technique while averting boredom!  This also works for rehearsing new or difficult sections of routine.  Look for any time you can get and challenge your performers.

You can begin using your time on-field to rehearse fundamentals at camp.  For any sections of the show that do not yet have routine, have the students spin a fundamentals exercise over it.  You might consider having them spin for one set and then stop spinning for the next, then resume spinning on the third, etc.  This helps them to learn how to spin and move through their sets and it is a great tool for the instructor to be able to identify who knows where their sets start and end as well as any front sideline body alignment issues.